Perdido Street Station is a weird fantasy novel by British writer China Miéville, the first of three independent works set in the
fictional world of Bas-Lag, a place where both magic (referred to as 'thaumaturgy') and steampunk technology exist. The novel has won several literary awards.

In an interview, Miéville described this book as "basically a secondary world fantasy with Victorian era technology. So rather than being a feudal world, it's an early industrial capitalist world of a fairly grubby, police statey kind!"[1]

Perdido Street Station is set in Bas-Lag's large city-state of New Crobuzon: the title refers to a railway station at the heart of the city.

Contents

Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is a scientist living in the city of New Crobuzon. He is approached by Yagharek, a member of a birdlike species known as garuda, who has had his wings removed as a punishment in his native land. He asks Isaac to allow him to fly again. Isaac agrees and starts collecting samples of flying creatures for his research with the aid of Lemuel Pigeon, a fence with links to the criminal underworld. One sample he receives is a large and unusual caterpillar, stolen from a government research lab. The caterpillar sickens until Isaac realises that it can feed on a popular hallucinogenic drug. It grows and starts to pupate. After reaching maturity, it emerges as a monstrous flying beast known as a slakemoth with the power to paralyse its victims using its wings. It escapes after eating the mind of one of Isaac's colleagues, leaving him catatonic. Isaac, Yagharek and Lemuel resolve to re-capture or destroy it.

Isaac's girlfriend Lin is a khepri, an insect-like humanoid and an artist. She is commissioned by Mr Motley, a mob boss, to make a sculpture of him. Mr Motley has four more of the slakemoths in captivity and harvests their milk to sell as drugs. The slakemoth that Isaac inadvertently raised frees its siblings, Mr Motley discovers Isaac's connection to the slakemoths and imprisons Lin, demanding from Isaac the return of his creatures. The slakemoths start to terrorise New Crobuzon, feeding on its inhabitants.

With the aid of Derkhan, a journalist and friend of Lin, Isaac discovers that the government sold Mr Motley the slakemoths to begin with. The security forces become aware of the activities of the slakemoths and begin to suppress the various rebellious elements within the city. To re-capture the slakemoths, they attempt to enlist the help of demons and the Weaver, a spider-like creature who moves through dimensions, obsessed with patterns and its own peculiar view of beauty. The demons refuse to assist and the Weaver soon ends up aiding Isaac.

After killing one of the slakemoths, with the aid of a sentient machine known as the Construct Council, Isaac and his friends destroy the eggs that they have laid before laying a trap for the remainder. The trap is mostly successful, but the last slakemoth escapes and returns 'home' to Mr Motley's facility. The Weaver transports Isaac to the warehouse where they find Lin who has been tortured and is still working on the sculpture. A confrontation occurs, during which Lin's mind is half eaten and the last slakemoth is killed by Mr Motley's men. Isaac escapes with Lin and Yagharek and prepares to leave the city. Isaac learns of Yagharek's crime, a rape of one of his own species, and refuses to help him fly again. Lin never fully recovers and Yagharek is left alone in the city, pulling out his feathers and having to accept his new flightless identity.

Mr. Motley, New Crobuzon's most feared ganglord, who runs a dreamshit harvesting operation, among many other nefarious activities. He has altered his body many times through remaking, into an amorphous collection of body parts and appendages.

Mayor Bentham Rudgutter, the corrupt mayor of New Crobuzon who bargains with crime syndicates and demons alike.

MontJohn Rescue, an ambassador of the feared handlingers (powerful parasites who take over other species as hosts), working for the mayor.

Lublamai Dadscatt, shares lab space with David Serachin and Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, first victim of the 5th Slake-Moth.

David Serachin, shares lab space with Isaac and Lublamai.

Teafortwo, a dim-witted and friendly wyrman who runs small favours for Isaac.

Construct Council, a hive-mind artificial intelligence formed in the city's rubbish dump. It controls many constructs (simplistic robots originally engineered for janitorial and other purposes) in New Crobuzon.

The Weaver, a multi-dimensional being in the form of a giant spider, who speaks in a never-ending torrent of free-verse poetry.

Michael Moorcock reviewed the book and said "Perdido Street Station, a massive and gorgeously detailed parallel-world fantasy, offers us a range of rather more exotic creatures, all of whom are wonderfully drawn and reveal a writer with a rare descriptive gift, an unusually observant eye for physical detail, for the sensuality and beauty of the ordinarily human as well as the thoroughly alien." However, he suggests "Mieville's determination to deliver value for money, a great page-turner, leads him to add genre borrowings which set up a misleading expectation of the kind of plot you're going to get and make individuals start behaving out of character, forcing the author into rationalisations at odds with the creative, intellectual and imaginative substance of the book." He concludes, "That aside, Mieville's catholic contemporary sensibility, delivering generous Victorian value and a well-placed moral point or two, makes Perdido Street Station utterly absorbing and you won't get a better deal, pound for pound, for your holiday reading!"[10]